Remove the aggregation permission of phpfreaks.com

2008-11-19

Tobias Schlitt

In a lack of a contact email address on phpfreaks.com (intentionally without any link, see here, why), I send this as an open letter:

phpfreaks.com administrators,
with this, I remove the permission to aggregate any kind of content, published on my domain schlitt.info or written by me (Tobias Schlitt) in general. From now on, you are not allowed to publish any kind of content written by me on your side. This also includes content, which is already aggregated through 3rd party resources.
Note, that you might breach against effective law, if you still keep publishing my content without given permission and probably could get fined for copyright issues in some states.
With kind regards, Tobias Schlitt

I also tried sending this to webmaster@phpfreaks.com and hostmaster@phpfreaks.com.

If you wonder for a reason, it is that I still found my blog articles aggregated on that website, through the phpdevelper.org. While I in general appreciate that people aggregate my content (I think this is made clear by offering XML feeds), I now explicitly disallow the phpfreaks.com website to do so. I do not write my content so that they can make money out of it with placing sneaky ads inside it.

Hope that's understandable.

Comments

If you feel so strongly about this, then you might find it interesting to note that we met with one of the people behind phpfreaks at LinuxTag 2003. At that time he was living in Germany--he may still be there, which might mean that you have better legal leverage.
http://www.phpfreaks.com/articles/134/0.php?linear=true&sort=1

Wez Furlong at 2006-07-20

Hi Wez!
Thanks for the hint! Having the maintainer of PHPFreaks living in Germany would give me a legal basis against such stuff, I think. I will have a chat with my lawyer about that.
Cheers! Toby

Toby at 2006-07-20

Tobias,
Whois info will provide you both a administrative contact and a technical contact address.
Besides the whois part I do wonder if you can deny anyone to use your xml feeds. It might even differ per country. A.f.a.i.k. there is no legal base for this.
Regards,
Hans

Hans at 2006-07-20

At least in Germany I can do, AFAIK. Providing an XML feed does not mean, that you are allowed to use the provided content for whatever purpose, re-publish and even modify it.
As I said, in general, I have no issue with people aggregating my content, as long as they don't put put ads into my text and make money with exactly my words. Please don't get me wrong. I really appreciate getting aggregated on pages like PHPDevelopers, but the PHPFreaks site is only for the purpose of publishing other peoples content and adding ads to it.

Toby at 2006-07-20

I have actually thought about trying to figure out where they're coming from and block access to the feed from that IP, but it's kind of a silly thing to do.
I hate how they put their ads all over everything...
(..though I did find it slighly funny when they aggregated this posting to their news section: http://www.phpfreaks.com/articles/736/0.php)

enygma at 2006-07-20

Hehe, yeah that one was quite funny. ;)
Anyway, I think if lot's of people start blocking their spider it should work out. But since I seem to be the only one complaining against it, I don't have much hope here.
Did you consider anything else against their abuse?

Toby at 2006-07-20

Check out:
http://www.thewebfreaks.com/about.php
for names and contact information...

Paul at 2006-07-20

On the one hand, you have a point. On the other though, I think that if you publish your site, you can't expect anybody using your feeds to play by your rules.
What if a newspaper publishes information from your article. They sell the newspapers and make money from it. Would you have a problem with that too?

Ivo Jansch at 2006-07-20

Hi!
Thanks for your feedback!
As I said. I don't have anything against using my content. In fact I appreciate it, else I would not have published it. But the way of adding ads to my content is what makes me upset. The newspaper would be sold for the efforts they have (layouting, printing, etc.). Any other page can use whatever banners near my content as they like. But this case is quite different.
Regards, Toby

Toby at 2006-07-20